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--- en:magazines:entostonteixon:no_41:ergatiki [2025/01/17 12:49] – no_name12
+++ en:magazines:entostonteixon:no_41:ergatiki [2025/04/20 19:33] (current) – external edit 127.0.0.1
@@ Line 101: / Line 101: @@
 It is not surprising that the outcome of Ch. Eliades' politics is the justification of a "national liberation" war, joining his voice with other chauvinists:
-//"Workers' Democracy reduces the substance of the matter more or less to a level of discussion about the ability or not of the Greek Cypriot ruling class to achieve a **a victorious military confrontation** with the Turkish occupation army.//
+//"Workers' Democracy reduces the substance of the matter more or less to a level of discussion about the ability or not of the Greek Cypriot ruling class to achieve a ** victorious military confrontation** with the Turkish occupation army.//
 //At the outset, we should note that freedom from Turkish military occupation is the **absolute right** of the entire Cypriot people, without excluding **any means**.//
@@ Line 133: / Line 133: @@
 A clear internationalist stance is still necessary to enable the workers of all sides to make a victorious socialist revolution. Something that cannot be done unless the working class is trained in democracy, not bourgeois democracy, but socialist, internationalist democracy:
+//"Capitalism and imperialism can be over thrown only by economic revolution. They cannot be over thrown by democratic transformations, even the most “ideal”. **But a proletariat not schooled in the struggle for democracy is incapable of performing an economic revolution**...//
+//...Through utilisation of bourgeois democracy to socialist and consistently democratic organisation of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and against opportunism. There __is no__ other path... We must direct free secession and free merging of nations along that path, not fight shy of them..." (Lenin, English Collected Works, Vol, 23, p, 25, 27).//
+If we see that the "emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself" (Marx), then we must also see the importance of the education of the working class in democracy. Socialism means democratic self-organisation and self-management of the masses, freedom for the workers and the oppressed. If the working class does not **learn** to be the most consistent supporter and protector of the rights of **all** the oppressed sections of society, be they women, homosexuals, whores, or even oppressed religious minorities and other marginalized social strata, then.... it will not be able to take power, nor, if it does, will it be able to build a new liberated society. And what applies to other democratic issues also applies to the attitude towards ethnic conflicts.
+How can **Greek Cypriot** workers and revolutionaries maintain a consistent (and not **hypocritical**) democratic stance on the Cyprus problem in the present period? Only by supporting the democratic right of the Turkish Cypriots to have their own state, if they want it. In the current period, socialist internationalist democracy demands from the workers of Greece, Cyprus and Turkey neutrality, abstention from the imperialist in-fighting as to whether the Greek and Greek Cypriot bourgeoisie will control the whole of Cyprus, or share this control with the Turkish gang.
+But that's not enough. In the present period, democracy always requires (and this is the most important thing) the active reaction to the OFFENSIVE ACTIONS of "our" bourgeoisie which aims to impose its own interests on the Turkish Cypriots by force. Not only at the military level but also at the economic, political and even cultural level. This means in practice, for the Greek Cypriot and Greek working class, supporting the Turkish Cypriots' right to self-determination against "our" bourgeoisie which denies it to them.
+And democracy and internationalism still demand from the working classes of Greece and southern Cyprus to **consciously** leave the task of practically confronting the Turkish army, and Turkish aggression in general, to those who have the obligation and duty to confront them. To the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot comrades and the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot working class, for whom in turn this is the only way to educate themselves in internationalist and socialist democracy.
+This is the only correct attitude towards the real danger of war. The problem for workers is **not** the risk of a Turkish attack, against which we need "defence". It is the danger of another war, for which both sides will be equally responsible, as they were in the previous ones.
+The only thing that can really reduce the risks of new wars is to re-engage and restore trust between the workers of the two hostile sides. It is the only thing that can make any bourgeoisie more reluctant to start a war in which it is not sure that it will have its working class on its side.
+Proclamations of workers' rapprochement that are not accompanied by a workers' struggle against the military armaments of "their" government cannot be considered sincere by workers on the other side. When Turkish Cypriot and Turkish workers see us supporting our government and military armaments, they are easily convinced that all Greek Cypriots are their enemies and that Denktaş and Özal are their allies. Do similar feelings not prevail among the workers on 'our' side?
+**THEY DO NOT WANT TO SEE**
+The problem with Ch. Eliades, as with others like him, is not that they cannot see and understand what is really happening in southern Cyprus.
+They just **don't want** to understand and they won't understand, because it doesn't suit their nationalism.
+Today the Greek Cypriot and Greek bourgeoisie dominate, as well as their social patriotic fellow travellers of the traditional left. Alongside them, there are those who do not cooperate (in words only) with "our" bourgeoisie because they consider it "incompetent" because they want even more extreme measures than it can implement today. Those of us who see the hypocrisy of all this can and must move on to discussion and joint action. The [[en:groups:epitropi_simparastasis_parpa|committee for the defence of conscientious objector Y. Parpas]], who is being retried on 18 January, continues to provide this opportunity.
+The nationalist "self-evident" and "self-explanatory" truths of Ch. Eliades are the same as those of almost the entire Greek Cypriot society.
+They express the current dominance of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology and nationalism. It is for this reason, and not because of their theoretical or logical strength, that they are very difficult to deal with.
+But it is not impossible. At least the lowest strata of workers and youth are not as steeped in it, as anyone who had joined us outside the factories to campaign against the re-vote on the "emergency contribution for defence" could see.
+These "self-evident truths" need to be addressed, not just in theory but in practice.
+[[en:groups:ergatikidimokratia|PUBLISHING GROUP "WORKERS' DEMOCRACY"]]
+. If anyone thinks that in order to be imperialist a country must necessarily be a great power, with heavy industry, fleets and colonies, let him look at what Lenin wrote mainly about "little" Switzerland in 1916 but even about Bulgaria of the same period in his article "Defence of Neutrality", in Greek Collected Works vol.30 pp. 336.
+⚫ p.g.w.d.
+{{tag>
+Condition:"Needs Translation":"Needs Turkish Translation"
+Magazines:"Within the Walls (Issue 41)"
+Groups:"Workers' Democracy (Group)"
+"Decade:Decade 1980-1989"
+"Year:1989"
+Areas:Nicosia:"Nicosia (south)" Areas:Nicosia
+Subject:"Cyprus Problem"
+}}